Mr. Chair, I am very pleased to take part in this debate in support of the estimates of the Department of Canadian Heritage, a very important department for the Canadian economy as well as for Canadian culture.
Exchange is all about sharing ideas and sharing ideas creates mutual understanding. Mutual understanding leads to cooperation and unity. Unity is good for our country, but on a broader scale unity is good for the progress of humanity.
As politicians we are necessarily concerned with society, with life in this country at the macro level. We speak of society often in abstract terms which is necessary of course if we are to grasp the complicated issues we must deal with as elected representatives and if we are to develop broad policies aimed at the country as a whole.
Underlying politics, well below the radar of the media and far from the headlines, is what someone once called the poetry of private relationships. As individuals we are all affected by philosophical trends and intellectual fashions, by the pronouncements of opinion leaders and by the values we see reflected in the mass media, in arts and culture and so on, but our individual viewpoints are also profoundly affected by our informal interactions with other individuals.
I, and I am sure many others, have heard countless stories of individuals whose political viewpoint experienced a profound shift following an intense discussion with another individual. Conversely, we know of cases where people's viewpoints have turned inward as a result of negative interaction with other individuals, perhaps individuals who were not sensitive to the person's language or cultural background.
We all know the apocryphal, now it seems, story of Jacques Parizeau who boarded a train in Montreal in the 1960s, travelled across Canada and disembarked at Vancouver. He has recounted this story often. He embarked as a federalist in Montreal and disembarked in Vancouver as a separatist. One has to wonder what interaction took place on that train. One has to wonder how the course of history would have changed if Mr. Parizeau had travelled to Vancouver with a group of young western Canadian exchange students coming back from two weeks in Quebec. Maybe the course of Canadian history would have changed.
By way of example of the positive impact of exchanges between individuals, especially youth of different backgrounds, can have, I would like to take members back to Montreal in the 1960s, a time of some division and a difficult time. At that time we still had two solitudes. The mood was tense between those who were anglophone and those who were francophone.
It was around 1965 when a young school teacher of about 39 years of age, who I am proud to say is one of my constituents today, came up with a pilot project whereby he convinced schools and school boards to allow students from a francophone school to spend two weeks in an anglophone school and vice versa to see what would happen.
This experiment was a great success. As a matter of fact Le Devoir devoted a newspaper article to this pilot project by Mr. Robert Kouri who is now a retired school teacher in Montreal. The headline at the time read, “Une expérience scolaire démontre que la co-existence amicale est possible”.
Perhaps the most inspiring result of that pilot project and the exchanges that followed is the fact that some 40 years later Mr. Kouri told me that those students who met at a very young age in these cross-cultural encounters still continue to stay in touch today and get together regularly.
The point of all this is to say that individual encounters and exchanges, and the quality of those encounters and exchanges matter. The magic that occurs through this process of cultural exchanges is not usually the stuff of newspaper headlines, notwithstanding the Le Devoir headline regarding Mr. Kouri's project. In fact, the process of creating friendships is somewhat commonplace.
However, we can never underestimate the power of individual bonds among different cultural and language groups, bonds that are replicated a million times over. We can never underestimate their power to be the glue that keeps a society together during the difficult moments in history. In fact, this House is built on the premise that an exchange of ideas will have a lasting benefit for society through the collaborative relationships that are created here.
I remember when I first came to Parliament Hill in 1993 as a staffer, it was a watershed Parliament. For the first time we had established parties and then we had a brand new party from western Canada with brand new members and a brand new message. We had basically a brand new party from Quebec with brand new members. If one looks back at that time, there was a certain degree of mistrust. People did not know each other, did not know where they were coming from, and did not know what to expect.
Over the course of MPs from different parties working together collaboratively on committees and travelling with those committees all over Canada to solve practical problems of interest to Canadians, one could see the bonds of mutual understanding, respect and even friendship forming, friendships and bonds which are all the more important in this minority Parliament.
The exchange programs sponsored by the Department of Canadian Heritage are an expression of the need in this country to foster encounters among Canadians, and the younger the better, from different regions and provinces.
Every year the department offers 25,000 exchange opportunities to young Canadians. Just think, Mr. Chair, 25,000 exchanges per year. Over four years we are talking about 100,000 exchanges. Over 10 years we are talking about 250,000 exchanges. I think we know what that means in a country with a population of 35 million. That is a high proportion of people getting together to share experiences and forming lasting bonds. These exchanges over time can change the outlook, the culture and the voting patterns of a country.
Exchange programs sponsored by the Department of Canadian Heritage do more than just establish permanent and life-changing relationships between individuals coming from diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds; they also help shape the leaders of tomorrow , the young people of today who will take over and become leaders in various fields.
Take for example the Canadian International Model United Nations sponsored by the Department of Canadian Heritage. Last year some 700 young people met for one week in Ottawa to discuss international issues. Each one had to represent a country and discuss important issues faced by that country. They had to do in-depth research for three to four months on the issues faced by the country they represented. A program like that one is fantastic and helps young people understand the qualities a leader must have.
Those who were in the Montreal area in July may have been lucky enough to see the 200 000 young people who took part in the National Heritage Fairs organized by the Historica Foundation. Thanks to the financial support of the Department of Canadian Heritage, young people aged 10 to 14 were able to share their stories with other children. You should have seen how creative they were just in the way they were telling those stories.
The Canadian social fabric is made of sharing, sharing common values and sharing differences.
I have a question for the Minister of Canadian Heritage. We know that such programs are beneficial for a large number of young people and of course for our country in the long term. How does she intend to make sure that an even greater number of young people have access to such programs and are interested in them? It is often the best students who apply, students who are ambitious in their schoolwork and in their extracurricular activities . How can the minister assure us here tonight in this House that everything will be done so that these programs are accessible to all students and all young Canadians? Our country will be build not only by the best students, but by the young persons and the leaders of tomorrow.